<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>Love Confession (Inktober Day 4) by cherryberry12</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26864023">Love Confession (Inktober Day 4)</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/cherryberry12/pseuds/cherryberry12'>cherryberry12</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Inktober 2020 [3]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Naruto</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/M, Inktober, Same-Age AU, Unhealthy Relationships</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 18:22:02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,411</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26864023</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/cherryberry12/pseuds/cherryberry12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>“You don’t need him. You could stay here with me,” she continues, rolling onto her side. She places a hand on his forearm, lets it sit there a moment, and when he doesn’t protest she links their arms together, pulling herself in closer to him. </p>
<p>His hand twitches, but he doesn’t pull away. </p>
<p>That, she thinks, ought to count for something.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Karin/Uchiha Itachi</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Inktober 2020 [3]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1958443</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Love Confession (Inktober Day 4)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Hello! Here is day 4--it's, ah, a little more bleak than the previous fics? But I think this one kinda captures, in my mind, one of the most interesting things about this pairing. Itachi is, for lack of better words, a piece of work, but Karin would settle for that--she's willing to put up with that because she wants to be loved so bad and she wants to be safe. And, regardless of how poorly he treats people, Itachi still is, at heart, someone who wants to do right by others, even if it's necessary that he hide it as best that he can. It's not a good thing, for obvious reasons, but the overlap in their personalities is just so smooth.</p>
<p>This goes along generally with the Informant AU/whatever the heart fumbles in the dark-verse. This conflict played out differently in the fic, but I wanted to revisit it and try it from a different angle where I didn't really have to worry about what comes next.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“You’re stronger than your partner is,” Karin starts. “I can tell just by the feel of your chakras.”</p>
<p>Itachi doesn’t respond. He’s lying on his back next to her with his eyes closed, hands folded over his stomach—quiet and distant, the way he always is when they’re in bed together. </p>
<p>He looks like a corpse. At least, too much like one for her liking. </p>
<p>Karin’s back is sore, and her thigh muscles burn when she moves, but it’s suddenly important that she touches him, that she does something to break up the painful stillness between them. </p>
<p>“You don’t need him. You could stay here with me,” she continues, rolling onto her side. She places a hand on his forearm, lets it sit there a moment, and when he doesn’t protest she links their arms together, pulling herself in closer to him. </p>
<p>His hand twitches, but he doesn’t pull away. </p>
<p>That, she thinks, ought to count for something. </p>
<p>“I could—I could leave Orochimaru behind, and you could leave the Akatsuki. I could find us a little village where we’d both be safe, and neither of us would ever have to worry again. Wouldn’t that be nice?” she asks. “Just the two of us?”</p>
<p>She doesn’t know if there’s a village like that anywhere in the world, but she thinks she could find it if they looked together—if he would just help her to find it. “With my sensing—I’d always know if we were in danger. Everything would be okay.”</p>
<p>Itachi keeps his eyes closed, but she knows he’s listening, that he’s processing what she’s saying—his chakra is a heavy cloud between them, dense and dark and maybe a little annoyed but—but she can’t particularly blame him for that. </p>
<p>There’s a way something like this ought to be done, she thinks, a careful way to ease them both into this sort of conversation. She’d rehearsed her thoughts a hundred times while she worked in the lab, while she tried to sleep in her lonely bed at night, but no iteration of them thus far has felt genuine enough, honest enough. </p>
<p>Good enough to persuade him. </p>
<p>Karin has a prickly little heart and a damaged little soul and neither are particularly well-suited to situations like these—she works best in the dark, in places where no one is looking too closely at her. </p>
<p>She moves best as a thing unseen, but right now she’s just frustrated that Itachi won’t look at her, that he would rather close his eyes again or stare up at the ceiling instead of acknowledging her. </p>
<p>“So we could just—the two of us, I mean, you and I—we could go somewhere. We could travel together and find a place to stay; it doesn’t have to be a village.” </p>
<p>Maybe it would even be better if it wasn’t a village—Kusa, Oto, Konoha… Karin doesn’t think either of them have ever found something in a village they wouldn’t hesitate to leave behind. “We could go wherever we wanted.”</p>
<p>Itachi heaves a deep sigh, but doesn’t say anything. She knows what he means without him even saying it—that this isn’t a matter that’s open for discussion. A lot of things are like that between them, and she has almost always been a good little spy who never questions her orders.</p>
<p>She doesn’t think she can keep doing that. </p>
<p>”I don’t want to go back this time. I want to stay with you.” She moves in closer to him, wanting him to just—to just <em>look</em> at her, to stop and think, if only for just a moment, about the swollen bitemarks on her body, the scars on her shoulders and breasts and arms.</p>
<p>He would’ve had to have seen them when he undressed her earlier, but she needs him now to look.</p>
<p>“Please, if you’d just—” </p>
<p>Itachi sits up and shakes his arm loose of hers, leaning over the side of the bed to collect his clothes, quiet and quick and impersonal.</p>
<p>“It’d be nice.” Her voice is shaky, already faltering, but she continues, “We could be just like civilians and get married. Or, I mean, if you wanted to, we could just…” she trails off, unsure of what he actually wants to hear—what she could offer that he’d accept.      </p>
<p>“Have the shinobi you noticed earlier left town yet?” Itachi asks. He dresses quickly but stops just short of putting his cloak back on. He holds it instead, folded under one arm, and stands in front of the door like he’s preparing to leave.</p>
<p>“What? Oh, I mean—” It takes her a moment, but a group of shinobi that large aren’t hard at all for her to find. “Yeah, they’re a few kilometers to the north. There’s about eight of them.”  </p>
<p>Itachi sighs, but he steps away from the door and replaces his cloak on the coat hook. “Then it would be best if we waited here overnight,” he says. It’s something he could only be saying for her benefit—even a group of ten shinobi wouldn’t be enough to give him trouble.  </p>
<p>It’s only a small gesture, but Karin thinks it ought to count for something. </p>
<p>Karin immediately crawls to the edge of the bed, waiting for him to turn around or to look up or—or to at least look <em>at</em> her again. “I don’t want you to leave ever. Not without me.” It sounds pathetic even to her own ears, but it’s the truth. </p>
<p>He seems to think so too, because he ignores it.</p>
<p>Karin can only ever put Itachi together in pieces—the few words he offers, his intentional silences. The unexpected disruptions in his chakra that suggest that, somehow, there’s something more to him than what she sees on the surface. </p>
<p>“You are saying far too much tonight,” he tells her. “I would advise you to say less.”</p>
<p>“I know one of these days you’re going to leave and never come back,” she whispers. It’s a thought she can’t bring herself to voice until he’s back within arm’s reach, until she’s got her hands fisted in his shirt—until she’s absolutely certain she can hold onto him. </p>
<p>He doesn’t stop her, doesn’t push her away, and Karin just can’t bring herself to accept that there isn’t a deeper meaning to that, that there isn’t a reason he lets her get so close to him. “I know that you don’t care about what Orochimaru is doing,” she says. “I know you aren’t afraid of him. I know that you don’t have to keep meeting with me like this.”</p>
<p>Itachi hums. “Are you suggesting that you’ve outlived your purpose?” he asks. Like most things he says it’s calm, even-toned, but there’s an underlying edge to it that makes her stomach drop.</p>
<p>“I—I wasn’t. Not at all.” She tightens her grip on his shirt, leaning in further, pressing herself up against him. “Please don’t say that.”</p>
<p>Karin can forgive almost anything, she thinks—being lied to, being yelled at. She can even tolerate him ignoring her, but the one thing she doesn’t think she can ever forgive is being left behind.</p>
<p>For all of Karin’s cynicism, there’s still something of a dreamer left in her, something in her that continues to hope things will get better even when they never have.  </p>
<p>“I love you,” she tells him, though he only sighs again. There’s a rattle to it, a spot where his breathing isn’t as smooth as it ought to be. She could fix that too, if only he’d let her. “Just—wherever you’re planning to go, take me with you.” </p>
<p>Itachi gives her a tired look. It’s the first time he’s looked directly at her since she finished giving her report earlier, but unlike then, there’s nothing kind in his gaze, nothing appreciative. “Right now, I am going to sleep, and I suggest you do the same.”</p>
<p>“Oh. Okay.”</p>
<p>Itachi finally pries her hands away from his shirt and steps away, reaching for the bedside lamp. The room goes dark, and she hears him pull back the sheets and his weight settles next to her on the mattress. </p>
<p>His chakra is tense and frustrated, but he still doesn’t complain or push her away when she attaches herself to him, resting her head against his turned back. </p>
<p>He hasn’t abandoned her yet, and all Karin has to hold onto is the hope that somehow, someday, that’ll come to mean something.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>As always, thank you so much to those who are following this fic, who have favorited or left reviews--I'm in the middle of exam season right now, but every time I get an email from FF or AO3 my heart becomes incredibly happy :)</p></blockquote></div></div>
</body>
</html>